By: Ina Steiner

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eBay sent emails to some sellers Monday night about its recent site outage in which many users could not log in to their accounts for over 7 hours. The letter explained that "a number of eBay sites and customer service platforms around the world experienced intermittent issues."

The letter, sent from Steve Boehm of eBay's Global Customer Experience, stated that the disruption began Sunday morning at 3:15 am PDT and by 10:45 am PDT, "the vast majority of site functionality had been restored."

The letter was similar to one eBay sent to some users on September 5 regarding its September 3rd outage.

Here is the U.S. version of the letter:

A message regarding eBay's September 14 technical issue.

Dear -,I'm writing to you today about the recent technical issues that have affected eBay, and to let you know how you—as a valued seller—are protected.

On Sunday, September 14, a number of eBay sites and customer service platforms around the world experienced intermittent issues. When the disruption began—at 3:15AM PDT—the eBay Technology Team immediately began work towards resolving it. By 10:45AM PDT that day, the vast majority of site functionality had been restored.

The personal information of our customers was not compromised by this incident.

We know how much it matters to your livelihood that eBay functions properly, and that lately our performance hasn't met your expectations. We apologize for this and are taking steps to ensure that we do meet them going forward.

As a seller with transactions impacted by this issue, you will be protected as follows:

- eBay will automatically credit all fees for certain listings that ended between 3:15AM PDT through 12:45PM PDT on Sunday, September 14. The additional two hours will help ensure we're assisting all of the customers potentially affected.

- The fee credit will apply to auction-style listings that ended (except those that sold for a Buy It Now price) and any fixed price listings that ended without a sale (except 30-day and Good 'Til Cancelled listings)

- If the affected listing was a free listing, it can be relisted for free within 7 days, even if the seller has used all allotted free listings

- Any transaction defects we can identify as resulting from this issue will be removed and not impact the seller's performance record.

- Top Rated status and Top Rated Plus discounts will be protected for sellers who were not able to upload tracking information to eBay within their stated handling time due to this issue.

The credits will be applied to your account by September 22 and reflected on your October-dated invoice.

Nothing is more important to us than our customers, and eBay is committed to maintaining your trust.

As always, thank you for selling on eBay.

Sincerely,

Steve BoehmGlobal Customer Experience

----Here is the UK version of the letter:

A message regarding eBay's 14 September technical issue

Dear -,

I'm writing to you today about the recent technical issues that have affected our platform and to let you know that we're protecting you.

On Sunday 14 September, a number of eBay sites and customer service platforms around the world experienced intermittent issues. When the disruption began—at 11:15am BST—our eBay Technology Team immediately began work towards resolving it. By 6:45pm BST that day, they had restored the vast majority of site functionality.

The personal information of our customers was not compromised by this incident.

We know how much it matters to your livelihood that eBay functions properly and that lately our performance hasn't met your expectations. We apologise for this, and we're taking steps to make sure that we exceed your expectations going forward.

As a seller with transactions impacted by this issue, we'll protect you in the following ways:

- We'll automatically credit all fees for certain listings that ended between 11:15am BST and 8:45pm BST on Sunday 14 September. The additional 2 hours will help make sure we assist all of our sellers who may have been affected.

- The fee credit will apply to auction-style listings that ended (except those that sold for a Buy it now price) and any fixed price listings that ended without a sale (except 30-day and Good 'Til Cancelled listings). If the affected listing was a free listing, it can be relisted for free within 7 days, even if you've used all allotted free listings.

- Any transaction defects we can identify as resulting from this issue will be removed and will not impact your performance record.

The credits will be applied to your account by 23 September and will be reflected on your October invoice.

Nothing is more important to us than our customers, and we're committed to maintaining your trust.

As always, thank you for selling on eBay.Sincerely,Steve BoehmGlobal Customer Experience

Let us know if you received one of these letters an if you have experienced any protections from defects resulting from unhappy bidders or buyers.

by: iheartjacksparrow

These hacks/outages/glitches must be costing eBay big time with all the money they are going to have to credit to sellers and all the unsold items that buyers couldn't bid on/buy.

There's an interesting discussion going on in an online doll group I belong to. Several eople are posting that eBay sales are dead and they are moving to Etsy.

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: Xander

Tue Sep 16 16:49:03 2014

''we're committed to maintaining your trust.''

I think it's a little late for ebay to really believe many sellers actually trust them these days.

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: Ebay's Slow Death

Tue Sep 16 17:08:19 2014

What a coincidence! I said yesterday afternoon, ''My sales are dead. I'm moving to Etsy.''

I have three Ebay accounts selling different things. One has over 2000 postcards listed, and I'm selling hardly anything for the past week.

I told my husband this morning, that I wondered if I'm in a Blackout period with Ebay, or if I had done something to make them mad. My sales have just died. Why keep listing stuff, when you are essentially working for nothing?

I hope people just haven't stopped buying. Hopefully, people on Etsy are still selling stuff.

As for the outage, I was having trouble accessing my account, relisting items, printing labels, and sending messages. It lasted for several days over the weekend. So, this thing about only a few hours before they had it fixed is nonsense. It lasted for days off and on.

I have no idea what is going on with Ebay, but I'm tired of it! There is no consistency. They are jerking here and there.

Isn't it interesting their chief technology guy jumped ship just before this latest outage? Do you suppose he knew Ebay was in deep trouble?

I think for small Sellers, Ebay is over.

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: Basset

Tue Sep 16 17:11:31 2014

No letter here, but no auctions. I have begun to ignore the free auctions and only do the FP that are free with my store and just pay for additional. No point worrying about auctions ending if eBay goes kerflooie for several hours.

If fixed price ends while the lights are out on eBay, then any potential buyer can find it again when it re-lists.

@JackSparrow

Although ''vintage'' is not my largest category I did open an Etsy shop a couple weeks ago and got my first sale last week.

When researching the item, it was really hard to find ANY venue (eBay, rubylane,tias, bonanza, google) that had something like mine. Frankly, PINTEREST provided the most hits on that item, but of course many were not for sale but just photos. Many of the photos were of year-old eBay ended listings.

Point being: if they ever figure out a tried-and-true way to provide a stable sales feature on Pinterest (and promoted it)- it could be a real contender.

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: Ming the Merciless

Tue Sep 16 20:27:02 2014

Big whoop.

What is good ole Steve going to do about defects caused from all kinds of settings that ebay took it upon themselves to change without my knowledge or authorization during this most recent Hack?

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: Map

Tue Sep 16 22:52:48 2014

Among settings that need to be checked are store subscribers keywords for every page of the sellers stores.

I found that mine were total gone and reset without my knowledge or permission.

Sales plummeted because google had nothing worthy to publish without keywords.

For 24 consecutive months now ebay search engine is still cranking out zero page views in traffic reports. All my traffic comes from google.

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: Ebay Seller-Ebay Buyer

Tue Sep 16 23:14:22 2014

I didn't get the e-mail and find it surprising that only "some" sellers get notified. I wonder if it's top rated sellers or large volume sellers, or if it's a mix of all different types of sellers. Also curious as to why Ebay is have so many tech issues this year. I suspect John Donahue is not very bright and is also cheap and doesn't understand that it's crucial to pay the money needed to hire well established internet security experts, to prevent hackers from bringing down the site and stealing users info again

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: Ric

Tue Sep 16 23:42:20 2014

IMO... They should have stopped at " We are committed...."

In addition to all the glitches (hacks?) that sellers have been impacted by, there's also all the rest of what sellers have to deal with: 1) for any number of reasons (valid or not), eBay will often slap a 21-day hold on your PayPal funds. You'll still have to ship the items you sold at your own expense put of your own pocket while you wait for your funds to be released 2) a buyer can leave you a negative feedback (whether warranted or not) and it will be next to impossible to get it removed as eBay always sides with the buyer 3) a buyer has AT LEAST 30 days (and under the new User Agreement going into effect possibly as many as 90 days) to demand a refund. Ebay will side with them and yank those funds for the refund either out of your PayPal account or directly out of your bank account if there's not enough in PayPal to cover the refund 4) the buyer demanding the refund- depending upon what they claim (whether or not true)- MAY NOT have to return the item in question to you, the seller 5) any buyer can- if they wake up with a "bad hair" day- leave you low DSR (Detailed Seller Ratings) which IMMEDIATELY result in selling restrictions being placed by eBay upon your account- and if you have less 100 transactions under your belt, 2 or 3 low DSRs (also now counted as Defects with the new Defect Rate metric) can even get you permanently suspended. 6) If the US Postal Service is LATE getting your item to a buyer due to weather or other forces totally outside your control as a seller, that COUNTS AS A DEFECT too. 7) Attempting to correct undeserved Defects cannot be done, as eBay Customer Service reps will clearly tell you on the phone (after you've waited on hold up to an hour) that Defects CANNOT BE REMOVED. Now...do you still want to sell on eBay???"

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: happyharry

Wed Sep 17 00:46:43 2014

Nothing is more important to us than our customers, and we're committed to maintaining your trust.>>>>>>

Ebay are telling you the truth....The key word here is NOTHING

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: XebayX

Wed Sep 17 08:43:39 2014

In my opinion, it's no coincidence that the date format has changed in the feedback view. With the old system, I could easily see if my competitors were showing the same decline in sales as me, indicating a general slowdown in our category, or if they were targeted by eBay's guardrail small seller genocide, or if site issues were causing a loss in sales on any particular day. Now all I can see is what happened in the past month, making it much harder to see definitive sales trends. In making this change, is eBay covering the data to hide the result of intentional or unintentional limited visibility?What other reason can anyone think of?

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: frustrated

Wed Sep 17 08:46:12 2014

any fixed price listings that ended without a sale (except 30-day and Good 'Til Cancelled listings).

Um, what other listings would there be??

WHY would anyone pay for their listing to be up for 3, 7 or 10 days, unless it's the holiday shopping season? And that should be a HUGE disappointment this year.

The big problem with ebay is that EVERYTHING, virtually EVERYTHING is a big fat secret.

No one knows all the factors to best match, what the ACTUAL sell-through rate is, who the bad buyers are. ETC ETC ETC

If you think SELLERS are tired of their shenanigans, think how tired buyers must be getting.

Every other time they try to search for an item, they get different results. Or NO RESULTS.

I WORK HARD for my money, would I trust these people? If they can't even keep the site running right, how do I know what they did with my payment info?

Getting to the point where we ALL have to decide if we really want to associate with these immoral, liars, and outright criminals.

I think the buyers are just sick and tired of them as we all are.

Jack Sparrow and Ebay's Slow Death

Yes, our Etsy sales are Blowing Away our Ebay sales! Last year at this point in time the exact opposite was true.

Ebay has totally screwed the pooch. They had the Golden Goose and killed it to get that last golden egg.

Personally, I am selling my Ebay stock (I bought at around $12.50 so it has done well) and am buying Alibaba come Friday! Ebay's day in the sun is long past.

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: Eric Saeger

Wed Sep 17 10:37:25 2014

I did receive the letter. They aren't refunding us for having our views/sales slashed in half for 2 days; they're just refunding for auctions that ended Sunday. Times do change.

All I can say is that our backstock is finally at the right vintage to make a ton of money in 2015. It'll be going to Amazon, as much as possible, unless Donahoe is fired. That's a promise. This idiot is singlehandedly creating the next AOL-style freefall.

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: ebay refugee camp

Wed Sep 17 11:19:23 2014

I want compensated, on Sunday I had one sale, and on all of the other outages my sales were down. This unacceptable, sellers get defects and punished, nothing happens to ebay. Are sellers allowed to say I,m sorry and a defect or a negative or a case goes away? No we do not.

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: Blog123

Wed Sep 17 13:51:21 2014

I just found this on the BBC News Website today, Wed 9-17.

''eBay redirect attack puts buyers' credentials at risk''

It states:''EBay has been compromised so that people who clicked on some of its links were automatically diverted to a site designed to steal their credentials.''

Here is the link:http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29241563

You can also find it the BBC News website front page or News Technology

Also in that article it states:''The issue was originally identified by Paul Kerr,an IT worker from Alloa in Clackmannanshire who is also an ''eBay PowerSeller''.''

''Paul Kerr also screen-grabbed a video of the attack, which he uploaded to YouTube as evidence.''

Here's the link to the Youtube video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT5TG_LvZz4&feature=youtu.be

You may also use the link in the BBC article to access it or search for it on Youtube

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: Eric Saeger

Wed Sep 17 18:46:00 2014

Good God. You've got to be kidding.Follow the money. Icahn? Alibaba?Donahoe shorting the stock?Wow.

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: Puck

Wed Sep 17 20:57:43 2014

eBay l'odeur de l'échec.

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: shabbychick

Wed Sep 17 23:53:42 2014

And to think that these redirect hacks have been going on for so long. And that Ebay took 12 hours to take down that malicious site!http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/04/28/fraudsters-modify-ebay-listings-with-javascript-redirects-and-proxies.html

eBay Emails Some Sellers about Latest Site Outage

by: thehosst

Thu Sep 18 00:04:46 2014

They didn't email me, as usual, buy I have a personal account, I do not sell there but shows a lit of 25 items or 2000 dollars a month if I wanted to. Only to that account I get the listing promotions, list One Trillion items at 1 penny, yea, the limit in the account is 25, is nothing but some scam as usual. eBay is getting hacked by Amazon and Alibaba and they just don't want to admit it, they are losing everyday big time.